Plumpton

Another friend whose company Powys enjoyed at Court House was Bernard O'Neill. A practising doctor, O'Neill was highly literate and introduced JCP to Nietzsche and to Dostoevsky, whom Powys considered to be the greatest of all novelists.

It was while the O'Neills were staying at Oak Villa on the outskirts of Plumpton in 1901 that Powys first met his life-long confidant and sparring partner Louis Wilkinson, who also joined the circle of literary friends. The personalities of the members of the circle, including Powys, form the basis of some of the characters in Wilkinson's novel The Buffoon.

Powys wrote the following sonnet at Oak Villa. The heading reads: 'Written on Tuesday morning April 30th, Oak Villa Plumpton Lane'.

When I awoke, the bands of dull despair
With fetters like gross plummets held me in -
I had no aim to reach, no end to win;
Dead-weary seemed the Earth, weary the air -
I rose and left my chamber; on the right
Stretched the grey Downs, huge quarry, chalk defile,
While on the left for many a leafy mile
The flowery landscape laughed itself from sight.
The ground, the grass, the woods were moist with rain;
A rippling torrent of melodious cries
Poured forth from feathered throats and yellow bills,
I stood - I felt the waves of life again
From Nature's reservoirs resurgent rise,
Breathed from the valleys - blown from off the hills.